Greg Hinz On Politics

City to merge tourism units, double visitor ad budget

City Hall has agreed to merge its tourism unit with the larger Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, a step that will allow the latter to double the money it spends on ads to lure non-convention visitors here.

In a step being formally announced on Wednesday, the city's Office of Tourism and Culture will give up its tourism unit, effective on July 1. It will continue to promote cultural events, but the job of bringing pleasure visitors to town will pass to the bureau.

The net effect will be to cut about $1.3 million in overlapping administrative costs, while adding "$2 million a year, minimum" to the budget for TV and trade-publication ads, said bureau CEO Don Welsh.

People inside and outside of City Hall are praising the action as a needed step to cut staff overhead while boosting funds for promotion.

"This is a great start—long overdue," said Jim Reilly, who once ran the bureau and now is trustee of the city's/state agency that operates McCormick Place. "A city should speak with one voice in tourism, image and conventions. The mayor and his team have done something in a few months that I and others have been pushing for years."

Under the plan, which is part of a wider effort to attract 10 million more visitors a year to the city, the bureau will become the region's lead agency on tourism matters.

The bureau recently began running TV ads in five Midwestern cities—Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Indianapolis—with the tag line Chicago is "second to none." The new money will allow the ads to run more frequently and potentially be expanded to other markets, Mr. Welsh said.

The city says the additional 10 million visitors a year, a 25 percent increase from 40 million now, should generate an additional $3.6 billion here in spending on hotels, restaurants and the like.

The bureau also recently opened a new office in London and is about to open facilities in Toronto and Mexico City. The merger may may help with that too, Mr. Welsh said.

"We have been very focused on the convention side. That always will be at our core," Mr. Welsh said. "But where we really see our opportunity is tourism."

Office of Tourism and Culture Executive Director Dorothy Coyle said her agency will retain about half its budget, for cultural promotion. "The goal of 50 million visitors is something the whole industry really can rally around," she said.